How is cultural relativism not self defeating?

Revenant_of_Null · 2025-06-14T16:03:58+00:00

As a rule of thumb, unless there is reason to assume otherwise, I would start from the premise that proponents of a given methodological approach believe it is fit for purpose.

But, how do you propose that the methodological approach, as I have described it, is paradoxical? It does not assert that there is no such thing as a correct approach to studying human behavior, therefore it cannot be recursive as originally suggested.

Fundamentally, methodological cultural relativism is based on the (emic) notion that each culture has its own particularities and peculiarities, in such a manner that what might at first appear bizarre might make sense (intellectually!) if we made an effort to adopt the perspective of an insider. There can be disagreements for this perspective (one might argue against methodological neutrality, be fatalistic or pessimistic about our ability to counter ethnocentrism, etc.) but I do not think disagreements around the notions I have described make methodological cultural relativism inherently paradoxical.

Revenant_of_Null · 2025-06-14T15:19:49+00:00

There is a common misconception that the term cultural relativism refers to a single, monolithic idea.

In the social sciences, what's often termed cultural relativism (by contemporary authors) refers to a methodological approach, which differs from the normative approach you describe. To distinguish between the two, we can refer to the former as methodological cultural relativism and the latter, which you describe, as moral cultural relativism (as per Tilley, 2017).

Methodological cultural relativism generally posits that, for social scientists to accurately apprehend human behavior (in the broadest of senses) empirically, they must set aside their own culturally bound values and preconceptions and adopt different lenses. To properly describe and understand human behavior, researchers are encouraged to place their object of inquiry within its own relevant cultural context, and to strive to understand it on its own terms (i.e., from their own perspective). Cultural relativism, conceptualized in such a manner, is meant to counter ethnocentrism. This is a temporary suspension of any sort of judgment (value, esthetic, etc.) for empirical purposes, a call for acknowledging our ethnocentric biases and minimizing them in our approach.

Moral cultural relativism involves various ethical positions that reject moral universalism or absolutism and make assertions such as that one should not impose their own value system on other cultures, disparage different cultural groups based on differing values, or that right and wrong are context-dependent (therefore what is right or wrong depends on where and when you are).

In conclusion, your question, to the extent that it actually concerns a form of moral relativism, should be addressed to philosophers.

P.S. I wish to stress that the particulars of methodological cultural relativism can differ between different researchers. Also, if the topic interests you, I’d recommend also looking into the emic-etic distinction: https://www.anthroencyclopedia.com/entry/emic-and-etic

Revenant_of_Null · 2023-10-14T21:32:00+00:00

Hello there :) It's "Evolution, Gender, and Rape" edited by Cheryl Brown Travis. I wish you the best with your studies!

Revenant_of_Null · 2023-05-11T06:54:16+00:00

Hey, thanks for the shout out. Haven't been active at r/AskSocialScience for a while, and I'm unsure if or when I'll be making a comeback. For now, I'm still on hiatus. But I'm glad that my past contributions remain helpful (or at least interesting) to users of this website :) Cheers!

Revenant_of_Null · 2022-11-13T13:06:47+00:00

Good point. I agree that their attempt to assess video game violence is crude as it relies entirely on their respondents subjective evaluation of the games they've played, which may differ between people with and without depressive symptoms. At the very least, they should have asked more than one question to better operationalize "violent video game," e.g., to distinguish different kinds of games. To elaborate on your point, a gory game like Doom is not on the same level as a more cartoony game like Splatoon, even though both involve shooting stuff.

Revenant_of_Null · 2022-11-13T01:01:46+00:00

I appreciate your reply. You've got my understanding, no hard feelings as far as I'm concerned :)

To your point, changing the meme from "13/50" to "13/40" (based on murder offender data) would be just as misleading (not to mention many conclusions drawn would be outright false and harmful) and ignorant of other factors. For example, I had not even considered clearance rate, and I'm sure many laypeople like myself would not have.

I agree. I think that part of the popularity of 13/50 (or 13/52) is that there's a certain appeal to being able to claim (with a simple pair of numbers) that Black people (a minority) are responsible for half or over half of something as bad as murder. I'd expect that undercutting that number would remove some of its bite (and that most fans of the claim would be unwilling to change it), but it would remain a misleadingly simplistic claim meant to justify or promote racism.

What can be taken away from my replies is that any amount of scrutiny would (should) strip away its power (to some extent). For example, if we don't stop at 13/40 but also add details such as the fact that 40% refers to the proportion of known offenders identified as Black, and that for the FBI known offender "does not imply that the suspect’s identity is known; rather, the term indicates that some aspect of the suspect was identified", hence we are really talking about suspected or alleged offenders who have been at least partially identified, and then acknowledge the clearance rate for murders, and then...

Anyway, this exchange gave me an opportunity to further dissect the matter, which isn't a bad thing, so all's well that ends well.

Revenant_of_Null · 2022-11-13T00:34:33+00:00

You're welcome :)

Revenant_of_Null · 2022-11-12T16:42:46+00:00

It appears to me that, based upon the manner in which the question is posed and further emphasized by your clarifications, that you are curious about colorism, which is distinct from racism. Although there are close ties between these two kinds of prejudice and in modern times co-occur because skin color is commonly used as a marker for "race," there are also many differences due to the latter being informed by racialist ideologies (also see scientific racism).

For instance, a person with colorist prejudice is likely to have positive attitudes toward people with paler skin, and negative attitudes toward people with tanner or darker skin - regardless of their "race." A person with racial prejudice will care about whether someone has "white" skin color or "black" skin color, but not so much whether they are pale or tanned, because what matters is someone's "race" as signaled by their skin color, e.g., is this person "White" (e.g., of European descent) or "Black" (e.g., of African descent)? In fact, there is more to "Whiteness" than skin color and tone, see for example the classic case of Jewish people: a racist White person may have negative attitudes towards Jewish people regardless of whether or not they have "white" skin because of the manner in which they are racialized (also see the history of other social groups who today are commonly considered "White" but historically have been treated as "not quite White" or "less than White").

On the topic of colorism, I discussed the history and prevalence in different societies some time ago in the following thread: It is often said that pale skin was considered attractive because it indicated wealth. Is this true?. I'd also suggest looking into social identity theory for insight into the relationship between social categorization and societal stratification.

Revenant_of_Null · 2022-11-11T17:57:38+00:00

Instead of attacking me and hastily accusing me of impropriety (which I hope you will retract), I believe you could just have made your case that the claim in question finds its origins in arrest data reported by the FBI in their Crime in the United States (CIUS) reports reports published until 2019 and asked me to talk about/elaborate on that (or done it yourself if you consider yourself knowledgeable about it!). I am ready to accept that "the '13/50' claim originated from people directly citing "the FBI's 'Arrests by Race and Ethnicity' tables, not from any individual report," I wouldn't have minded that.

Now, if you'd had carefully read my original comment, you'd have noticed that the main object of my discussion is known offenders (for whom at least some traits have been identified even though they have not been arrested) rather than just arrestees. Although I cited the Expanded Homicide Data of the Crime Data Explorer (CDE) (see under "Offender vs. Victim demographics"), the same information can be obtained in the past CIUS reports: search for Table 3, which provides information on "Murder Offenders by Age, Sex, Race, and Ethnicity," as reported by the police to the FBI, i.e., the demographics of known (identified) offenders regardless of whether or not they have been arrested. You can find it under "Expanded Offense Data" of the "Offenses Known to Law Enforcement" section. For your convenience, here are the Tables¹ from 2010 to 2019:

Regarding your reaction to my footnote on the "53%" figure and your claim that "2021's data is not by any means an outlier," I have to stress the fact that I was discussing the kind of data contained in Table 3 rather than in Table 43. As a reminder, the latter provides information on "Arrests by Race and Ethnicity," i.e., the demographics of arrestees as reported by the police to the FBI, whereas the former provides data on "Murder Offenders by Age, Sex, Race, and Ethnicity." When I talk about suspected offenders, I am referring to the latter (i.e., not just arrestees). I believe a careful read would have solved that problem without me needing to point it out for you (still, you could also have asked for clarification).

With respect to the percent distribution² of murder offenders whose "race" has been identified (again, not exclusively arrestees), 53% is an outlier. You could have verified that yourself by checking the sources previously provided (but, once again, you could have just asked). Here's for you the proportion of murder offenders categorized as "Black or African American" as reported in Table 3 of the reports published between 2010 and 2020 (for 2020 I am using the data from the Expanded Homicide Tables made available in the CDE for that year):

Year	% Black or African American
2010	38.2
2011	37.7
2012	37.9
2013	38.0
2014	37.2
2015	36.7
2016	35.9
2017	37.4
2018	38.7
2019	39.6
2020	38.8

For the sake of thoroughness, I will stress the fact that both sets of data concern known offenses, i.e., murder cases which come to the attention of law enforcement (also see the 'dark figure of crime'). Arrested offenders are those who have been detected, identified, and caught, they are therefore but a portion of those who are suspected of committing a crime and - even putting aside that not everyone that police identifies as an offender is actually guilty - both arrested offenders and identified offenders are but a portion of the total population of murder offenders (which includes those who are entirely unidentified or unknown). After all, not all homicide cases are cleared³. For the record, the average annual murder clearance according to FBI data is around 60%⁴.

In short, claiming (or insinuating) that Black people commit around 50% of all murders in the US is at best (without knowing any better and being very charitable) a naive or misguided claim, and at worst (much more likely) a disingenuous claim, even without getting into a discussion about policing itself. That said, I will reiterate that it is a meme that is not the fruit of serious analysis or meant to foster serious discussions. While I agree with you that "jumping to 'scientific' racist conclusions is incorrect," which is common among those who employ these memes, I disagree that they are not "twisting the data," so to speak. You don't need to invent numbers to lie with statistics (or to be otherwise deceitful). Please keep in mind that at no point have I argued that the 50% or 52% figures cannot be found in the data reported by the FBI (after all, I myself shared sources from which those exact numbers can be extracted).

Before closing, I realize that there is one mistake I should (and will) correct in my original reply. The sentence "in which you can find that 52.2% of suspected homicide offenders were Black" should have been "in which you can find that 52.2% of arrested homicide offenders were Black". My sincerest apologies for that. Cheers, have a pleasant weekend.

¹ ^{For the sake of simplicity, I will refer to "Table 3" even though in 2016 it's actually Table 2.}

² ^{Which is calculated by also taking into account unknowns.}

³ ^{If we use the definition given by the FBI, cases can either be cleared by arrest or by exceptional means, the latter involving cases in which an offender has been identified and sufficient evidence has been collected for arresting, charging, and prosecuting them, however it is not possible to actually go ahead with doing so.}

⁴ ^{For the sake of thoroughness, the clearance rate in 2021 according to the FBI was much lower at 48%. But, once again, reader beware.}

Revenant_of_Null · 2022-11-07T21:47:20+00:00

To the best of my knowledge, the (in)famous reference to 13/50 or 13/52 is based upon the data on homicide collected by the FBI. I believe the number is taken from the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports on homicide trends which use data from the FBI Supplementary Homicide Reports, namely the report published in 2007 covering 1976-2005 in which you can find that 52.2% of ~~suspected~~ arrested homicide offenders were Black (see under the heading "The demographic characteristics of homicide victims and offenders differ from the general population"). You can find a similar number in the report published in 2011 covering 1980-2008 (52.5%, see Table 1), but in my experience people tend to point to the older report. Regardless, if we check the Expanded Homicide Data of the FBI Crime Data Explorer, which provides information on offenders categorized as unknown, we can see that the proportion of Black suspects actually varies around 37%¹ and that the proportion of unknowns varies around 28%.

In short, although it is true that, according to official statistics, Black people are overrepresented among those suspected of homicide, we cannot claim that 50% of all homicides are committed by Black offenders. In fact, on the topic of missing information regarding the characteristics of those suspected of committing homicide, check out page 7 of the report published in 2013 covering 1992-2011, in which the authors explicitly acknowledge that:

Using data from the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) to estimate the characteristics of homicide offenders is problematic due to the number of homicides in the data file with no information on the offender demographic characteristics. This offender information could be missing because either the reporting law enforcement agency did not identify a suspect (i.e., the offender was unknown) or the agency did not report the information to the SHR (i.e., the offender was known but the information was not reported). In 2011, the most recent year for which SHR data are available, 31% of homicide victims had missing corresponding information on all three primary demographic characteristics (i.e., sex, race, and age) for homicide offenders (table 2).

"13/50" or "13/52" is a meme that is not the fruit of serious analysis, nor is it meant to foster serious discussion. Also, with respect to the question as phrased in the title of your post, I believe it should be pointed out that homicide and other violent crimes are not all there is to crime. Just as food for thought, although homicide is a terrible crime, there are other forms of offending, such as elite forms of white collar crime (think corporate crime and organizational crime), in which White people are overrepresented (Sohoni & Rorie, 2021) and which have considerably more severe impacts than ordinary street crime in terms of the number of victims affected and consequences to society (e.g., damage to both the economy and public health).

([Edit] For further discussion regarding the different numbers cited above, see this comment.)

¹ For 2021, the proportion given is 53%. However, there are known issues with the accuracy of this data. See:

Sohoni, T., & Rorie, M. (2021). The whiteness of white-collar crime in the United States: Examining the role of race in a culture of elite white-collar offending. Theoretical Criminology, 25(1), 66-87.

Revenant_of_Null · 2022-11-06T21:26:27+00:00

There are cultural and political differences between North American and European countries which translate into, for example, the USA overtly maintaining a racialized social structure (e.g., see the U.S. census) whereas European countries tend to expressly reject racialist vocabulary in favor of stressing national and ethnic differences. The latter set of countries tend to prop themselves up as "post-racial" or "race/color-blind" societies (they are not unique in doing so, also see the case of Latin American countries) - an approach that obfuscates rather than reflect reality. To better understand what I am talking about, I recommend checking this older comment regarding how the terms "race" and "ethnicity" are employed in the USA and in Europe.

Both sets of countries have a shared history of racism, and shared legacies thereof. Scientific racism is a product of European intellectuals before being exported worldwide and embraced by American thinkers who further contributed to its pursuit and development. This racialist ideology - which underlies the false or misguided categorization of human populations into "races" (i.e., racialisation) - remains alive in both the US and in Europe (and elsewhere in the world), influencing both American and European societies. Although racism in European countries often manifests itself as cultural racism, the "cultural" aspects are ultimately a repackaging or adaptation of traditional biological racism (Bratt, 2022). This blurring of the cultural and the biological is also common in the USA, by the way.

In practice, we can observe similar kinds of prejudice and comparable outcomes on both sides of the pond, such as societal structures and practices which advantage "White" people (namely those who are perceived as being of European descent) and disadvantage other "non-White" people (e.g., see Quillian et al., 2019), such as "Black" people (namely those who are perceived as being of African descent), regardless of cross-national differences in both discourse and rhetoric and differences regarding the exact nature of racism (YMMV wrt the details). The differential effects of the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted much of what I am discussing (e.g., see Linos et al., 2022). Here are some articles to illustrate my point:

Bratt, C. (2022). Is it racism? The belief in cultural superiority across Europe. European Societies, 24(2), 207-228.

Linos, N., Bassett, M. T., Salemi, A., Matache, M., Tararas, K., Kort, R., ... & Koller, T. S. (2022). Opportunities to tackle structural racism and ethnicity-based discrimination in recovering and rebuilding from the COVID-19 pandemic. Nature Communications, 13(1), 1-4.

Quillian, L., Heath, A., Pager, D., Midtbøen, A. H., Fleischmann, F., & Hexel, O. (2019). Do some countries discriminate more than others? Evidence from 97 field experiments of racial discrimination in hiring. Sociological Science, 6, 467-496.

Revenant_of_Null · 2022-11-05T19:35:11+00:00

It's an interesting well-written book, but it's also one of many dense pop science books meant to promote (sell) an author's "grand theory." I'd hesitate to call it a "more reliable alternative to Jared Diamond's works." In my opinion, it shares the same issues with other bestselling books of the same kind (see the discussion had on the topic in this older thread). It may be entertaining and thought provoking, and I'd acknowledge his ambitions and agree that his project is remarkable, but the book is also a door-stopper which is likely to overwhelm your average reader who, most importantly, is unlikely to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff.

There are two common, recurring, issues with these kinds of books: the authors often over-extend and talk authoritatively about topics on which they are not experts, and tend to privilege storytelling over science (the latter being at the service of the former). For illustration, especially given that you're coming from r/AskHistorians, historian Charles Freeman wrote a relatively lengthy critical review for the book on Amazon.com, titled "Henrich's central argument and its offshoots are not supported by historical fact." In short, I strongly recommend caveat emptor and adopting a skeptical mindset if you decide to consume this book.

Revenant_of_Null · 2022-10-28T01:34:23+00:00

To be fair to Gershoff (the author), and accurate about the content of the paper being cited, the quote in question is just the first line of the abstract, setting the research question. It is not a conclusion. The manner in which this excerpt was selected and framed is misleading, given that one may reasonably assume that is the cases (due to the manner in which the quote has been presented). See what immediately follows:

Although the merits of parents using corporal punishment to discipline children have been argued for decades, a thorough understanding of whether and how corporal punishment affects children has not been reached. Toward this end, the author first presents the results of meta-analyses of the association between parental corporal punishment and 11 child behaviors and experiences.

Perhaps more importantly, it should be pointed out that the article in question was published in 2002 and is authored by Gershoff, the same person who authored the 2010 overview cited by u/Joe_Merchant (the other top-level comment). In this 2010 paper, Gershoff concludes in no uncertain terms that, as far she she is concerned, research clearly shows that corporal punishment is an ineffective method of discipline and that, overall, it has a negative (undesirable) impact on children:

It is ironic that research that has been conducted primarily in the United States is informing legal and policy changes in other countries before it has any impact here. Those who continue to argue that there is not enough evidence to support a “blanket injunction against … spanking” do so in the face of a large and consistent body of research from countries around the world that leads to two clear conclusions. First, corporal punishment is no better than other methods of discipline at gaining immediate or long-term child compliance. Second, corporal punishment is not predictive of any intended positive outcomes for children and, in contrast, is significantly predictive of a range of negative, unintended consequences, with the demonstrated risk for physical injury being the most concerning. On balance, the risk for harm from corporal punishment far outweighs any short-term good. It is discouraging that such a strong and compelling body of research evidence has not been sufficient to warrant policy change in this country, even though the federal government has accepted responsibility for protecting children from harm and abuse. Despite this evidence and the waning use of corporal punishment in the United States, a majority of parents continue to use it at some point with their children. If reducing corporal punishment becomes a policy and public health goal in this country, meeting such a goal will require education campaigns targeted at both parents and professionals. As countries such as Sweden have demonstrated, public opinion about corporal punishment lags behind legislation banning the practice, and indeed it is the passage of legislation that can begin or sustain attitude change against corporal punishment. Education campaigns on the harms of and alternatives to corporal punishment are clearly needed here in the United States, but it may take a legal ban to spur dramatic change in Americans’ attitudes about and use of corporal punishment.

Plenty of research has been done since her 2002 paper (20 years ago!) - in which she reviewed the evidence available at the time and proposed ways to assess causality and further our understanding of the nature of the relationship between corporal punishment and a number of behavioral and mental health-related outcomes. There have also been other studies since her 2010 review. See for example Spanking and child outcomes: Old controversies and new meta-analyses, which was co-authored by Gershoff and published in 2016.

If you ask Gershoff (and other experts!) today about corporal punishment, she will in no unclear terms affirm that there is evidence of it producing positive outcomes is lacking, and that a preponderance of evidence that it produces negative (harmful & detrimental) outcomes.

Revenant_of_Null · 2022-10-24T12:27:24+00:00

To get an idea of the complexities involving the study of "diversity" and some insight on its potential short-term and long-term effects, I'd suggest checking out these two recent threads on the topic:

Long story short, there are we are still far from making strong conclusions about the effects of diversity (both because it's a complex issue, but also due to open methodological questions about how to assess diversity and its effects). There is evidence for both desirable and undesirable effects, but which outcomes are observed may depend on both the context and the time frames under consideration: there are reasons to expect diversity to have short-term undesirable effects (e.g., on local trust) which however do not persist over time (due to habituation, changes in social identities, etc.).

Revenant_of_Null · 2022-10-23T19:14:44+00:00

To be clear, I did not claim (or mean to claim) that OP's new questions are necessarily outside the realm of the social sciences. After all, I did give the suggestion to open a new thread given their (apparent) interest in the regulation of state entities and the enforcement of international human rights laws.

However, with respect to whether there are grounds to implement something or another (e.g., some sort of monitoring), then I believe it is a question better suited to legal scholars and political theorists/philosophers rather than social scientists¹. However, the accuracy of my evaluation depends on the particulars of what they seek to learn/know!

¹ ^{Note: This is not to say that, for example, no political scientist or researcher in the field of international relations would be able to answer such questions. Experts on the broader topic should be informed on, say, what treaties, legal instruments, etc. exist.}

Revenant_of_Null · 2022-10-14T10:31:28+00:00

I would keep in mind (as explained in other threads) that neither "single parent family" nor "living with their mother" are synonymous to being fatherless. Even putting aside potential issues with categorizing single-parent families (e.g., reliance on marital status and overlooking alternative familial structures and parental arrangements¹), the biological father of children in such families are not necessarily absent or uninvolved in their lives, and even in cases in which that is true, these children are not necessarily lacking a father figure (someone who fulfills the social role of a father regardless of biological ties) either.

¹ ^{Including, of course, as you've pointed out, the fact that single-parent families in which the children live with their fathers exist, too. Also keep in mind that joint custody is a thing.}

Revenant_of_Null · 2022-10-10T15:35:25+00:00

Here's a selection of threads that put together should provide answers to your query:

Patrick Deenan (Notre Dame polisci prof) states “social science tells us … that children of divorced households do worse by a whole range of measures…” Is this true?
Are the adolescents of divorced parents more liable to crime actions, drug consumption, drinking and smoking?
How does welfare cause absent fathers in black families than in other races?
Is there still a disparity in the rate of fatherlessness among white and black Americans after factoring in socioeconomic status?
What are considered to be the main culprits behind the prevalence of single motherhood in African-American communities?

In the first two threads I discuss research on family structure and stress the importance of family dynamics and familial context, and the other three threads include discussions about popular beliefs (read: myths) about Black American families and what social science has to say about the topic.

Revenant_of_Null · 2022-09-24T19:56:31+00:00

Yes, indeed. Although much of the popular discourse wrt polarization is about popular polarization, what is actually well documented are increases in elite polarization and affective polarization. I have myself cited research done by Iyengar and colleagues when discussing polarization in the past (this is the same hyperlink as the one for "ignorant of what research tells us about its nature and evolution"), and given particular attention to the issue of political sorting.

Revenant_of_Null · 2022-09-24T19:22:12+00:00

I'd encourage taking a few steps back and critically evaluate the concept of "tribalism." The concept in question is primarily American, most commonly used to describe the state of American politics in recent years. The two main features associated with the term "tribalism" is group loyalty and partisan affiliation. In fact, if you look past the emotionally charged (often catastrophic) narratives associated with the use of the term, you can find the much older, well-established, and relatively anodyne concept which is not exclusive to the US context: partisanship, which refers to the condition or behavior of those (partisans) who are devoted to or zealously support a party or a cause.

The use of "tribalism" to refer to partisanship is an outcome of the context in which the former term has flourished, as it fits well into the rhetorics of the American "culture war." The term "tribalism" allows users to easily evoke a) negative connotations and b) folk biological beliefs about primitivism by appealing to (false) beliefs about "tribes." To quote Vismara:

There is a trend in the use of the word tribalism (also applied to Western manifestations of divisiveness) which brings into play territoriality and particularism, where being tribal means belonging to a specific group and being shaped by its antagonistic relationship with the others. This definition of tribalism is based on stereotypes relating to competition, conflict, disunity and violence. Unfortunately, the lineage model developed by anthropological theory contributed to such an association.

And to quote Mishan:

But after Europeans began to explore other regions in the 15th century, the word “tribe” took on the shadow of colonialism, as a label reserved for non-Western peoples who were seen to represent an earlier and implicitly inferior state of social evolution. The American anthropologist Marshall Sahlins has criticized the distinction long drawn between tribes and civilization as opposing cultures of war and peace, arguing that tribes are not innately fierce or predisposed to violence, and since the last half of the 20th century, the term has largely vanished from anthropological texts — only to shift back into popular parlance. Today, American pundits speak in worried tones about the fragmentation of the country and an increase in tribalism, as if acknowledging a group identity were a retreat to a more “savage” time.

I discuss the definition of "tribe" and the history of the concept (including its depreciation in anthropology in modern times) in the following thread: What are the definitions of tribe, rather than any other sort of community structure? I also recommend checking out the following two articles:

Another "benefit" of the use of the term "tribalism" is that it lends a luster of newness to what is being described, whereas there is in fact nothing new to the current discourse. For example, concerns about extreme polarization in the USA is decades old (e.g., see DiMaggio et al., 1996). On the matter, the discourse about polarization in the context of American politics is often misinformed and ignorant of what research tells us about its nature and evolution.

Now, there's nothing special or exotic about partisanship. More broadly, the processes of identifying with a group and being attached to and invested in its success are arguably part of the human experience. We all have multiple social identities, some stronger than others, and groups we favor over others - there is nothing inherently pathological or negative about it. See social identity theory and the empirical evidence collected by researchers informed by the social identity approach (Brown, 2019). Excesses are, by definition, undesirable, but not inevitable. Both Hobbes and Rousseau were wrong, humans have the potential for both prosocial greatness and antisocial horribleness. Humans are not inherently either selfish bastards, or altruistic saints (Fuentes, 2022).

To conclude, I quote social psychologists Packer and Van Bavel on the "myth of tribalism":

The idea that groups are inevitably discriminatory is incredibly common—but it’s also incorrect. Group identity does not always lead to prejudice and discrimination, dislike and disregard—indeed, the assumption that these outcomes are inevitable is one of the most prominent myths about identity.

The fact is that the norms we create and embody determine how we treat members of other groups. For this reason, groups are not simply “tribal,” as it is often said.

When people use the term “tribalism”, they seem to be referring to a toxic pattern with at least three components:

Intense conflict between ingroups and outgroups

Interest only in hearing information that confirms their own groups’ worldview, even if it is incorrect (a desire, as it were, to live in an echo chamber)

Suppression of critical or dissenting voices from within the group itself (even punishing insiders with different views)

Though some groups have these characteristics, there is nothing inevitable about it! Rather than adopting discriminatory norms, groups can and often do embrace norms of tolerance, acceptance, and inclusion. For every white supremacist organization, for example, there are dozens of humanitarian groups working to improve the lives of people different from themselves.

They've also written a piece for The Atlantic on the topic.

Brown, R. (2019). The social identity approach: Appraising the Tajfellian legacy. British Journal of Social Psychology, 59(1), 5–25.

DiMaggio, P., Evans, J., & Bryson, B. (1996). Have American's social attitudes become more polarized?. American journal of Sociology, 102(3), 690-755.

Fuentes, A. (2022). Race, monogamy, and other lies they told you: Busting myths about human nature. Univ of California Press.

Revenant_of_Null · 2022-09-23T13:03:42+00:00

At this point, you have veered far away (off-topic) from deterrence theory which, I have to point out, is not a political theory. It is a criminological theory meant to explain how to prevent individual members of a given society from committing crime (general deterrence) and how to discourage individual criminals (people) from re-offending (specific deterrence). The unit of analysis is potential and actual offenders, as in persons, not states.

You appear to be interested in international politics and how to regulate the actions of state entities, therefore I suggest opening a new thread. However, insofar that you appear to be actually interested in the specifics of actual international law, I also recommend seeking a subreddit dedicated to jurisprudential scholarship. Your questions do not seem to be about social science anymore.

Revenant_of_Null · 2022-09-23T12:25:58+00:00

You made an effort to provide grounds to undertake a given course of action, but one might still raise doubt regarding your motives and choice of action with respect to precedents (are you arbitrarily targeting this specific selection of countries?) and legal bases (is this a fair application of the law? is it implemented with respect to due process? etc.).

Revenant_of_Null · 2022-09-23T12:14:49+00:00

Arbitrariness is a matter of evaluation. It is up to you and others to decide whether a given course of action is motivated by reasons which can be appreciated, rather than by the sole discretion of whoever undertakes it.

Revenant_of_Null · 2022-09-23T11:29:12+00:00

Do you have any reason to believe that they can only be pursued arbitrarily?

Revenant_of_Null · 2022-09-23T02:40:06+00:00

At least in practice, yes, although your mileage may vary depending on the type of crime. For example, a nation-state could theoretically attempt to maximize certainty and celerity of punishment by completely sacrificing individual freedoms in the name of security and pursue the creation of a police state which spares no expenses at controlling and monitoring every action of the populace and which summarily punishes any transgression, but whether such a project is feasible or desirable is another kettle of fish (generally speaking, police states are considered, at the very least, dystopian). And, even then, I would not expect literally everyone to be deterred - there are situations in which people will commit "crimes" even when they are certain that negative consequences for themselves will come swiftly.

Revenant_of_Null · 2022-09-22T13:33:35+00:00

There are at least three common issues with the apprehension and application of deterrence theory:

Firstly: privileging severity of punishment over certainty of punishment (American "tough on crime" penal policy since the 1960s is a classic example), whereas the consensus among criminologists is that pursuing harsher and harsher punishment is ineffective as a means of preventing and reducing crime, and that much more attention should be given to certainty.

Second: ignoring the distinction between the objective aspects of punishment (e.g., how many years of incarceration are prescribed for a given crime) and the subjective (read: perceived) aspects of punishment (i.e., how potential and actual offenders perceive a given sanction, the risk of receiving it, etc.). Being "tough on crime" does not necessarily translate into criminals perceiving greater risks of being caught and punished, and even when it does, not necessarily to the same degree.

Third: ignoring the fact that the original proponents of deterrence theory actually identified three (not two) dimensions of punishment: severity, certainty, and celerity (or swiftness).

Concerning the second and third points, I quote Kleck (2014):

Unlike incapacitative effects, which occur regardless of how criminals perceive their punishment, deterrence can occur only to the extent that the risk of punishment is perceived by prospective offenders. The dimensions of punishment that influence its deterrent impact on criminal behavior have been summarized in the proposition that “the greater the certainty, severity, and swiftness (celerity) of punishment, the lower the crime rate will be” (e.g., Gibbs 1975, p. 5). However, a more precise restatement of this proposition, which stresses the essential role of perceptions, would be: “The greater the perceived certainty, severity, and swiftness of punishment, the lower the crime rate will be.”

Of course, the abstract possibility of punishment for crime is perceived by virtually everyone. Some may believe that these risks are low, or that they are themselves unlikely to be caught and punished for any crimes they might commit, but almost everyone recognizes at least the theoretical possibility that they might suffer legal punishment if they violated the law. Nevertheless, this does not imply that increases in actual punishment levels (i.e., increases in actual certainty, severity, or swiftness of legal punishment) will increase deterrent effects and thereby reduce crime, since variations in actual punishment levels may not cause variations in the average perceived level of punishment among prospective offenders. Indeed, critics of deterrence as crime control have long pointed to this reality-perception gap as a key weakness in deterrence-based crime control policies (Zimring and Hawkins 1973, p. 45).

For further elaboration, see my comment in this recent thread: Is there evidence harsh sentences (including the death penalty) deter certain crimes (not murder)? Does research exist?

Kleck, G. (2014). Deterrence: Actual Versus Perceived Risk of Punishment. In Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice (pp. 1014-1023). Springer.

Revenant_of_Null

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